Near-eye display (NED) devices such as head-mounted display (HMD) devices have been introduced into the consumer marketplace recently to support visualization technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). An NED device may include components such as one or more light sources, microdisplay modules, controlling electronics, and various optics such as waveguides, lenses, beam splitters, etc.
Waveguides may be used in an NED device to convey light representing artificially-generated images from the image generation components of the device to an optical receptor of a user (e.g., a human eye). One or more of these waveguides may act as the device's image output interface to the user; these waveguides can be referred to as “output waveguides” of the device. For example, with a near-eye AR device, the user may see computer-generated images projected from a transparent output waveguide while the user views the real world through the output waveguide. In this way, the computer-generated images appear to be superimposed over the user's real-world environment.
Light-emitting diode (LED) modules may be used in an NED device to generate light for image generation. However, an NED device with a large field of view and a high resolution may require using relatively large LED modules that have a significantly large size. The large LED modules lead to a bulky product, which is undesirable since the product is typically worn by a user.